"You never wear that helmet anywhere"
If Roethlisberger decides to ride his motorycle without skull protection in a state where he isn't legally required to do so, that's his prerogative. It's also his ass (and jaw, and nose), as they say, and if he doesn't want to invest that fat NFL salary into some kevlar for his massive cranium, things like this are going to happen:
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger broke his jaw and nose in a motorcycle crash Monday, but doctors said they had successfully treated his multiple facial fractures after hours of surgery.
Roethlisberger, the youngest quarterback to lead a team to the Super Bowl championship, was taken to Pittsburgh's Mercy Hospital, where he underwent seven hours of surgery after the late morning accident.
It was unknown whether the accident would affect Roethlisberger's chances of playing this season, when the team hopes to repeat its Super Bowl victory of earlier this year.
[...]
The 24-year-old Roethlisberger was not wearing a helmet, Pittsburgh police said. He has said he likes to ride without one, a habit that once prompted a lecture from Cowher.
And will prompt several more, no doubt.
I think helmets should be mandatory, myself, but it's not illegal in many states (Pennsylvania and Texas being two of them). The odds are so fantastically against you in a helmetless crash, I tend to view the exercise as a sort of high-speed thinning of the herd. I'm sure Roethlisberger was insured, which means the only financial strain will be put upon the Steelers organization, who are as we speak sitting down to rewrite Big Ben's contract to include a helmet clause, if not a prohibition on riding motorcycles altogether.
I'd have absolutely no problem with folks riding helmetless if everyone who did so also filled out an organ donor card. At least that way someone benefits from their stupidity.
I have a personal reason for thinking motorcyclists need helmets - I might not have had my wife if she hadn't been wearing her helmet, and she definitely would have lost her brother if he hadn't been wearing his. They plowed into the back end of a car at apparently high speed - neither of them can actually remember the moment of impact, or several minutes before or after. She was thrown forward several yards and he was thrown into the car's back end with enough force to crack his skull open right on the helmet line. If the helmet hadn't been in the way, his skull would have taken the full impact, and I'd be minus one brother-in-law.
Important safety tip, Igon - that helmet can be all that stands between you and a very bloody death.
"I'd have absolutely no problem with folks riding helmetless if everyone who did so also filled out an organ donor card."
Hospital folklore has it that ED personnel call them "donorcycles." Energency medical people tend to have strong opinions about safety and avoiding injuries, opinions that most people seem not to want to listen to.
No sympathy for Roethlisberger. None. As far as I am concerned, if his career is over, he almost got what he deserved. Riding without a helmet is totally stupid, anyway. Riding without a helmet when you are a professional athlete with millions of dollars riding on your physical health is orders of magnitude less forgivable.
How could he have known any better? It's not like he makes his living in an industry with a helmet law.
I was going to make the Donorcycle comment, but I was beaten to the punch. So I will instead make this observation, prefaced by the fact that I think everyone should wear a helmet, and in a car should wear a seatbelt.
The observation is that neither of these safety measures guarantees safety by any means. My biological father died in a car accident, in large part *because* he was wearing a seat belt. He drove into a canal, and the passenger claimed she couldn't get him out because of the belt. My Dad (stepfather) died in a go cart accident, despite wearing a helmet, when he crashed into a concrete post.
What's my point? I don't know. Maybe there is no moral. Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happened.
Yeah, the "donorcycle" thing is true.
I'm a med student seriously contemplating neurosurgery, and as a result I've spent a lot of time with the team here. On any given day there are about ten patients with severe head injuries due to motorcycles and ATVs.
I feel bad for BigBen. I rode motorcycles when I was a younger man and always with a helmet. But man, there were so *many* times where I almost got crunched by some clueless driver. It was about then that I realized that I wasn't immortal.
My brother is a doctor. He tells me that the best cadavers they had in anatomy lab--from the neck down--were victims of motorcycle accidents.
Yes, Ang, you can die wearing your seatbelt or helmet, possibly even because of these devices, but I'm pretty sure that the number of people who died because they weren't buckled up or weren't helmeted is a lot higher.
Me, I'm really glad my mom was wearing her seatbelt, or she would have died twenty-three years ago.
--Andrea
I hope Roethlisberger has a l00 percent recovery. Sometimes we need things like this to happen to use so we can appreciate life better. Am sure he will go around giving talks about the benifits of wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle. So big Ben please have a 100 percent recovery for yourself and all who love you.
As a motorcyclist myself, I think that it's a person's right to choose whether or not he/she wears a helmet. HOWEVER...there should be a serious overhaul in how this is treated for insurance reasons. If you are going to ride sans protection, you should be required to inform your insurance provider of this brainless fact, and they should jack your rates up thru the roof because if you ARE involved in an accident, you are going to require far more medical care than if you chose to wear a full-face helmet and other protective equipment. If you ALWAYS ride with a helmet, your rates shouldn't be screwed with (unless they have good reason to do so, i.e. speeding tickets, etc). If someone tries to say damn the man & lies on the insurance forms and says that they will wear a helment and then does NOT do so and is involved in an accident, the company should be allowed to refuse payment on ANY claims for that person (insurance fraud is, after all, illegal). The reason I have this standpoint is quite simple--my rates are insane, and part of the reason for that is that I am paying for other people's idiotic decisions. I always wear a helmet; I grew up riding with my father on the back of his bike (till I was old enough to get a license & bike of my own) and he instilled in me that I simply MUST protect myself. I do not ride unless I am wearing long pants, sturdy boots, leather gloves, a full-face helmet, and a jacket made specifically for motorcycling (my main one is leather w/body armor, my summer jacket is polysteel mesh w/armor). I have had so many friends get seriously injured not only by not wearing a helmet, but by not wearing jackets, etc--a college buddy of mine hit a fence, shattered his spine, and got TANGLED in barbed wire. How much lower would his medical bills have been if he'd been covered in cowhide with body armor? Hmm. Yeah, so why do I have to pay so much for MY insurance? Oh, that's right. Other people are retards.
From what I could tell from the news reports, he was T-boned. It wasn't his fault, but our media skew any story that has to do with a motorcycle.